Posted on March 1, 2022 by Wendy Frost

H. Raghav Rao A leader in the field of information systems, H. Raghav Rao , the AT&T Distinguished Chair in Infrastructure Assurance and Security in the UTSA Carlos Alvarez College of Business, was named a fellow of the Association for Information Systems (AIS).

“I am humbled and enthralled to receive this award,” said Rao. “Being recognized by this elite body is an honor for me.”

The AIS Fellow Award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the information systems discipline in terms of research, teaching and service both locally, regionally and globally.

Joining UTSA in 2016, Rao is a renowned researcher and scholar. His research interests broadly fall under the umbrella of information assurance and cover such topics as cyber security, digital resilience and disaster management.

He is a co-guest editor of a special issue, “Unleashing the Power of Information Technology for Strategic Management of Disasters,” in Information Systems Research —a top journal in the field . During the summers of 2022 and 2023, Rao will be a Fulbright-Nehru Fellow at the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore in India.

Rao has authored or co-authored more than 250 technical papers, of which more than 180 are published in archival journals. His most recent research has focused on health-related misinformation and the adoption of mobile payment systems.

“We’ve been looking at how people perceive harm from health-related misinformation,” said Rao, who has published work on this topic with his doctoral students and colleagues. “How does it affect individuals and what happens due to the corrective actions?”

Rao is co-editor in chief of Information Systems Frontiers , advisory editor of Decision Support Systems , associate editor of ACM TMIS and senior editor at MIS Quarterly . In 2019 he was inducted into the UTSA Academy of Distinguished Researchers.

Serving his field through engagement activities, Rao helped lead the first panel in the U.S. on women and cyber security at the Secure Knowledge Management workshop in 2004 and facilitated the first IFIP information systems conference in Ghana in 2019.

“I think my service contributions were as critical to this award as my scholarship,” said Rao, who founded the AT&T Distinguished Speaker Series in the Alvarez College of Business.

Previous honors include being named the inaugural recipient of The Bright Internet Award for his contributions to the information systems discipline from the Korea Society of Management Information Systems and receiving the Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow Award for outstanding intellectual contributions to the information systems discipline.

A graduate of Purdue University, he previously was the SUNY Distinguished Service Professor at the University at Buffalo.

— Wendy Frost